During the 2012 presidential campaign the Republicans talked an
awful lot about democracy and American principles, but after the November 6
election, when their ideas were rejected by a large majority, it turns out they're
not all that fond of those things. Mitt Romney's dream of a nation of yeomen corporations was downsized and
shuttered--despite the countless roadblocks to voting in Democratic-leaning and
minority-heavy districts, erected by people who talk loudly about democracy and
the constitution, but their actions send a very different message.

Now they're mad as hell and they just want to get away from it all.

Over at the White
House "We the People" online petition forum, tens of thousands of
these dead-enders are signing secession petitions, asking that their state
(actually, not just their own state, as you don't have to be a citizen of the
state whose petition you're signing) be allowed to go its own way, perhaps to
become an indie republic, perhaps to team up with other unhappy-feeling states
to form a sort of post-modern Confederacy.

It's a weird thing. After his defeat, Mitt picked up his sad face
and went to Disneyland, but the sorest of losers seem to be heading off to
Civil War Land.

Raging against the iron boot heel of affordable health care on
their necks, not to mention clean air and water, a path to energy independence,
foreign wars ending, terrorists hunted down and expanded guarantees of fairness
and equality in marriage, the workplace and the military, these sore losers
want to take their toys and go home. Actually, the place they yearn for isn't
home, exactly, but some fantasyland version of the USA, one that exists
somewhere in the silver mists of their misguided adolescent fantasies. In a
time when so many conservatives believe in a literal interpretation of the
biblical story of creation, as well as absurd new definitions of rape and
personhood, it's no surprise that their ideas about the founding fathers'
vision of the Republic seem about as thin as a pop-up book on the US
constitution.

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Silly as this secession talk sounds, in some a ways it's a big
deal. As of noon Friday, December 7, secession petitions from 40 states had
been filed through the wonderful new White House widget. Not surprisingly, Texas
leads the pack, with 118,949
signatures. The person who created this petition, identified as "Micah H.,
Arlington, TX," filed it on November 9, 2012. That's three days after
November 6, when Barack Obama was reelected, and three days plus 152 years
after the election of Abraham Lincoln. The prelude to the US Civil War began on
December 20, six weeks later, when South Carolina voted to secede. Ten
additional states left the Union over the next several months. (Texas was
number seven.)

As of December 7, 2012, only 24,809 had signed the South Carolina
petition to secede (again). Since it's known as the "Cradle of Secession" you'd
think there would be more interest. Maybe it's a case of been-there-done-that.

The 2012 petitioners complain that the federal government has
egregiously abused their constitutional rights. Interestingly, the 11
treasonous states who withdrew from the Union in 1860-1861 also complained
about their rights being steamrolled by both the fed and the northern states.
The primary rights at issue concerned slavery--the right of Southerners to buy,
sell, keep, rape and otherwise utilize slaves as their personal property, to
have such property returned to them when runaway slaves escaped to states where
slavery had been outlawed, and other such deeply cherished rights.

Ironic and ugly, isn't it? Why would anyone want to be associated
with a verb like "secession" these days?

As we have seen in so many other examples of tragic-comic bad
behavior, Texas is only too proud to be leading the way. None of the other
secession petitions comes close to Texas. The second most popular, Louisiana,
had 37,289. Five other states have 30,000-plus signatures, six others have
20,000-plus signatures, and then the numbers fall off rather quickly. In case
you want to see where your state ranks in this online wall of shame, go to the "We the People" home page.

To qualify for posting on this online platform, a petition must
collect 150 signatures within 30 days. The petition must amass 25,000
signatures in the next 30 days to merit an official response from the White
House. This could be interesting to watch. I'm anxious to hear what the
President says about the petition to: "Deport everyone that signed a petition
to withdraw their state from the United States of America." That one already has 26,405 signatures.

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As a Texan, I feel some responsibility for this, sort of like
inheriting an original sin. When I was a boy growing up in Johnson City, Texas,
I remember how proud it made me that Texas was so big and storied, a state that
was once an independent nation. We used to take our toy guns to the dumping
ground by the creek near my house and reenact famous battles like Custer's Last
Stand, the Shoot-out at the OK Corral and the previous week's episode of Combat. Every adolescent boy had a
coonskin cap in those days, and so we idolized Davy Crockett, and we fought
the hell out of the Battle of the Alamo, over and over again. In that one, we
all died, just like the 200 or so doomed defenders in San Antonio on March 6,
1836. Then we'd spring back to life and reenact the Battle of San Jacinto,
where on April 21, 1836, General Sam Houston led a larger Texan Army into a deadly ambush of Santa Anna's
forces, who happened to be sleeping at the time. The Texans howled "Remember
the Alamo" as they drove the Mexican Army into a humiliating defeat. Thus, liberty
and revenge were achieved in one fell swoop.

Houston's military leadership, combined with his service in public
office, his skills as a multi-cultural ambassador, and the fact that he was
just a damned interesting dude, combined to make him Texas' greatest hero--even
more beloved than Rick Perry, even though Perry has served longer in office
than Houston.

When you're a kid, fighting with make-believe weapons and invisible
bullets, it's awesome fun to go down in a blaze of glory, fighting for a
seemingly brilliant cause--even though you don't yet have the fuzziest idea of
the facts behind it (even though we were obliged to take a full two years of
Texas history in public school).

Jesse Sublett is a regular contributor to OpEdNews.com. An author, ghost writer and musician in Austin, Texas, he has published crime novels, eBooks, true crime, memoir, essays and journalism. His work has appeared in New York Times, Texas Monthly, (more...)